Love, Life & Family from the Big Apple

:: Food :: Pad Krapow

Pad Krapow (stir fry <insert meat> with holy basil) is one of my favourite Thai dishes; I like how all types of minced (ground) meat works in this dish and the combination of the fragrant holy basil and bird’s eye chili.

This is such a classic Thai dish in Asia, you would think this is readily available here in NYC given the number of Thai restaurants. Unfortunately, many restaurants here use sliced meat; and for whatever reason includes bell peppers (annoyingly I find this addition in 95% of Asian stir fry dishes). Pongsri, which is pretty authentic and does a good Yum Woon Sen (7.5/10), has a branch next door to my office (I got many colleagues hooked on them) does exactly that – sliced meat and bell peppers. Sigh!

After a 1.5 year in NYC, I have only found this dish done with minced in TWO restaurants. Now that we have moved to Hoboken, there is none near me. So what is a desperate, pregnant woman to do to satisfy her craving?

I made my own, adapted from here. I used minced pork and regular basil as a substitute since I couldn’t find holy basil at the local supermarket.